


Wildflower

by alainey



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 02:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16399400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alainey/pseuds/alainey
Summary: A short introspective piece which focuses on Zyra and her state of mind many years after her transformation.





	Wildflower

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece I did for a League of Legends zine called Rosaria. 
> 
> Zyra is a lot of fun to write for - I find her character incredibly interesting and I'm happy with the way this turned out. Please enjoy!

It’s still dark when Zyra first stirs, her body slowly willing her into consciousness. She blinks her eyes open, mind muddled, before curling into herself, snuggling deeper into the moss that blankets her body.

She stays that way for a while - enjoying the warmth of her bed - then slowly stretches herself up and into a sitting position. Her joints crack lightly as she reaches for the sky, and she opens her mouth to yawn just as the first tendrils of sunlight make their way over the horizon. She remains seated – stretching, yawning, tired – as the light begins its steady stream into the clearing. The rays filter across Zyra’s lazy features, shifting softly between the trailing tails of vines that surround her little haven.

Zyra rises with the sun.

Her feet touch stone as she climbs from her perch, mind clearing as the chill seeps through her bones. As she breathes in the gentle smell of the dewy earth, Zyra smiles to herself, her lips pulling back into a softly contended grin. 

Zyra rises with the sun, and the rest of the Kumungu Jungle rises with her. 

Sunlight continues its slow stream into the clearing as Zyra begins her morning routine – handfuls of cold water splashed onto her face, a moment of self-concerned preening into a lightly cracked mirror, and a gathering of gardening tools as she readies herself for her work. The motions of her morning are something both foreign and familiar, and Zyra moves about the clearing with an easy, cat-like grace, humming a silly little tune to herself as she works. A silly, human little tune.

The plants that surround her clearing are flourishing, flora alive with energy. Zyra is methodical in her work, monitoring each individual plant with practiced care. Hemlock, nightshade, snakeroot, oleander. Pitcher plants, flytraps, wolfsbane, castor bean. Thorn spitters, vine lashers: she cares for each of them in turn, lovingly, and regards them as her children. 

This place that she resides in – this haven of hers – is something special. A place she can always return to. Something, perhaps, of a home.

Zyra glances up, taking a moment to gaze across the clearing at her garden, her children. Her home. She takes them all in, and she knows then that she is happy. 

Happy. 

Zyra’s hands still, pausing in her work, and she lets out a short, amused breath. Happiness. Such a human emotion. 

There’s no reason why she should feel such a strong connection to this place, no reason why she should have made a home here – of all places. After her transformation, Zyra had spent many of her years exploring the world, allowing her feet to take her places that her roots had never reached. She had walked among the people of Runeterra – observing, unassuming – a perfect predator – and had learned of their ways. She had seen so many great things and had been to so many magnificent places.

And yet, year after year, she had always made her way back here. Her feet had always returned her to this little patch of land in the Kumungu Jungle, to this tiny clearing that she had wasted away in for centuries. 

She still feels ties to this place – this place where she once had roots. 

Zyra lets out a soft sigh, returning to her gardening. That wasn’t entirely true. She still has roots here, but they’re different now. They’re invisible, emotional roots. Human roots. 

She had nearly perished in this clearing, all those years ago. Starving and powerless, Zyra had watched the rest of her species fall to famine. She, however, did not fall. She had overcome the pain – had saved herself through strategic evolution, adaptation. She had forged herself a new body, a new mind. A second chance. 

She should have rid herself with this place after that – should have taken that second chance and escaped with it. 

And yet, here she was. Zyra had always returned – unable to resist the pull back her old domain. Her new, all-too-human mind had just refused to let this place go. And after years of returning to this clearing, frustrated and nostalgic, Zyra had eventually settled in, had made the decision to recolonize. Not with her own species, of course – they had long been destroyed – but instead with the local flora. She had set up a home for herself, had created her own small haven full of all of the creatures that would one day overrun the human race. 

Zyra pushes away her thoughts, willing herself to concentrate on her work. She looks down at the ground before her, hands working carefully around the soil of a Venus flytrap. Her eyes trail along its form – from the lobed leaves to the flowering stem. Though small in stature, the flytrap was vibrant in color and majestic in shape. 

A brief scurrying movement in the dirt catches Zyra’s attention, and her eyes snap from the flytrap to the body of a tiny black beetle. Zyra stills, considering, before snatching the beetle up in one quick, impulsive motion. She holds it between two fingers, watching delightedly as it struggles in vain to get free.

Then, without a second thought, Zyra deposits the beetle between the flytrap’s gaping jaws, taking care to push the beetle down just so. The lobes of the flytrap snap shut in an instant – alerted of the beetle’s presence by the frantic movement of its legs. The beetle continues its fruitless struggle, trapped between the flytrap’s jaws, and Zyra’s delighted grin grows wider. In the next few hours, the beetle would be digested, fully devoured and within the metaphoric belly of her tiny, hungry beast. 

Should she really feel this proud? Zyra huffs out a laugh, oddly content as she watches her flytrap feed. It wasn’t as though the flytrap had needed the meal – it was healthy, thriving. It hadn’t needed to be fed. It hadn’t been starving. 

It was nothing like how she used to be. 

Zyra sits back on her heels, brushing excess dirt off her hands as her smile slips from her face. 

At one point, she had been a flytrap. Nothing more than a beautiful flower, lying in wait for her next prey. Zyra had at once been both powerful and helpless – rooted to her tiny plot of land. Tethered. 

She had wasted away in this clearing, hunger pulsing through her veins. She had been able to do nothing but wait – wait for the next creature to chance across her, wait for the next hapless being to cross her path. The time between each chance encounter with life continued to grow longer with each passing year, and Zyra’s hunger grew with it.

There had been no one to take care of her, back then. No one to lovingly drop beetles into her hungry, waiting jaws. 

In the end, her salvation had come in the small, fragile form of a young woman. 

The woman – a mage – had stumbled across her clearing, robes in tatters and blood dripping down her face. She had been someone else’s prey; escaped. Zyra didn’t care.

The woman had tripped on her way through the clearing, barely managing to catch herself on one of Zyra’s roots as she fell. Her breathing had been ragged as she looked up, but Zyra still remembers the catch in her breath as her eyes fell upon Zyra’s full form.

The young woman’s eyes had lit up then, and she’d pulled herself forward, bringing up bloody hands to run soft along the red, velvety petals of Zyra’s form. Despite her wounded state, the woman had been charmed – face revealing her wonder as she took in the graceful curves of the Stranglethorn’s vines, the thick trailers pulsing lightly with the little magic she had left.

“Gorgeous,” she remembers the woman murmuring, voice an undertone of admiration and awe. “I’ve never seen a flower as pretty as you…” 

The hunger had been all consuming, and every piece of Zyra’s mind screamed at her to feast – to take what was hers – to cling to life just a little bit longer. Any second and Zyra could have snapped her up, devoured her like the flytrap had that beetle, and the gnawing hunger would had ceased. It would have left her, would have fled under Zyra’s jaws – 

– only to return again, even stronger than before.

Zyra had hesitated at that, had let the woman pet her, admire her, explore her with her eyes. She had let the woman take her time, and in that moment, Zyra had devised a plan – a new route of evolution.

Zyra still remembers the moment of transferred consciousness – the moment that she had absorbed that woman’s memories and shifted herself from plant to human to something more. It had been as if she had woken up from a dream. All at once, Zyra had felt light, both wild and restless in her newly formed body. 

And that’s how she remains. Both wild and restless. A proud Stranglethorn with a fragile human body and useless human feelings. Uncomfortable, yet necessary, for alongside both of those things came everything Zyra had ever dreamed of: boundless power, endless possibilities, and – most importantly – freedom. Something that her old body had never granted her.

She had nearly died in this clearing, hungry and alone. And look where she was now. 

She had come so far. 

Glancing down, Zyra could see that the flytrap had begun its digestive process, the beetle now lying still between the plant’s maws. The flytrap, just as healthy as it had been before, pulses softly with Zyra’s magic under the light of the morning sun. Zyra pulls her hand away from the plant’s knobbed form, feeling pride well up in her once more. 

This was her home now – this clearing full of her children, this haven for the dangerous flora of the jungle. Zyra cares for her little garden of death – mothers her plants, nurtures them – in a way that no one ever cared for her. 

Abruptly, Zyra’s stomach rumbles, and she barks out a laugh, her fangs glinting brightly in the dewy morning light. Hunger. A universal feeling. 

Perhaps the rest of her gardening could wait. 

Zyra stands up, hands steady at her sides. She exits the clearing, breathing in the earthy scent of the world around her, before crouching, ears attuning to the sounds of the restless Kumungu Jungle. The ground around her shifts, roots unearthing themselves with practiced ease, and Zyra feels her magic thrum throughout her body.

_Here I am,_ Zyra thinks with pride. _I’m something new. Something neither plant nor human. Something that’s evolved._

Zyra licks her lips as her stomach churns again. These days, she no longer has to wait for her next meal.

It was time to hunt.

**Author's Note:**

> Please look forward to the release of Rosaria, and follow @leagueofzines on tumblr for updates! All profits go to charity, and they’ve got an incredible team of artists and writers lined up.
> 
> Additionally, you can find me as @mis-elani-ous on tumblr. Cheers!


End file.
